Kill Zones vs Trading Sessions: What's the Difference?

Trading sessions are the working hours of a region's traditional markets: Asia, London and New York. Kill zones are narrower windows inside or around those sessions, in which ICT traders look for setups. The two ideas overlap, but they are not the same thing. A session says which market is open. A kill zone says which few hours of the day you decide to watch. This guide on kill zones vs sessions shows both on one clock, in UTC and Moscow time, and says when the times shift.

Kill zones vs sessions: the short version

Crypto has no opening bell, so neither one is a rule of the market. Both are conventions that traders use to organise attention. Our trading sessions tool shows the session half of this live, in your own time zone.

What a trading session is

A session is the span in which the people at one financial centre are at their desks. Our clock uses 09:00 to 18:00 in Tokyo, 08:00 to 17:00 in London and 08:30 to 17:00 in New York. Other sources use slightly different edges, so treat them as approximate.

Each is anchored to its own city's clock. Tokyo does not use daylight saving, London and New York do. That is why the UTC time of the London and New York sessions moves twice a year and the Asia session does not.

In summer, in UTC, the three sessions run:

• Asia: 00:00 to 09:00 (03:00 to 12:00 MSK)
• London: 07:00 to 16:00 (10:00 to 19:00 MSK)
• New York: 12:30 to 21:00 (15:30 to 00:00 MSK)

Sessions overlap. London and New York share about three and a half hours, from 12:30 to 16:00 UTC in summer. That overlap is the usual busy stretch in currencies and, as the data below shows, in Bitcoin too.

What a kill zone is

A kill zone is a window where ICT-style traders expect the day's useful moves to start: a sweep of resting liquidity, a displacement, a run into a fair value gap. The idea is to trade only when the odds of that happening are higher and ignore the rest of the day. For the structure behind it, start with market structure and the liquidity sweep guide.

The commonly cited kill zones, all in New York time, are:

• Asian: 20:00 to 00:00
• London: 02:00 to 05:00
• New York: 07:00 to 10:00
• London close: 10:00 to 12:00

There is no official standard. One popular guide gives exactly these hours, others stretch the New York window to 08:00 to 11:00 or start it at 08:30. Pick one version, write it down and keep it fixed while you test it. This post uses the list above.

Both on one clock

The figure shows sessions as wide bands and kill zones as the narrow ones, in summer time, with Moscow time on the second axis.

Three things stand out.

1. The London kill zone (06:00 to 09:00 UTC) starts an hour before the London session opens. It is a pre-open window, not part of the session.
2. The New York kill zone (11:00 to 14:00 UTC) starts an hour and a half before the New York session on our clock and includes the US stock open at 13:30 UTC.
3. The London close kill zone (14:00 to 16:00 UTC) sits inside the London and New York overlap.

So a kill zone can be inside a session, before it, or straddling its edge. That is the practical difference. A session is a place on the calendar of a market. A kill zone is a filter you apply on top.

When the times change

Kill zones are defined in New York time, sessions in each city's own time. Because Europe and the US change their clocks on different dates, the relationship between them is not constant.

The UK clocks go back on 25 October 2026, and the EU changes on the same day, the last Sunday of October. The US ends daylight saving at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of November, which is 1 November 2026. Moscow does not change: it stays on UTC+3 all year. The new UTC and MSK session times are in crypto session times after the clock change.

Between 25 and 31 October the London session moves an hour later in UTC, from 07:00 to 08:00, while New York time has not moved yet. The kill zones, tied to New York, stay where they are. For that one week the London kill zone starts two hours before London opens instead of one. From 1 November everything lines up again with the winter offsets: London kill zone 07:00 to 10:00 UTC (10:00 to 13:00 MSK), New York kill zone 12:00 to 15:00 UTC (15:00 to 18:00 MSK).

If you trade from a fixed UTC schedule, this is the one mistake to avoid. Converting once in summer and never again puts you an hour off for the next five months.

Do kill zones show up in crypto data?

Crypto is open all day, so the fair test is to check. We took Bitcoin's one-hour candles on Binance (BTCUSDT) for the 90 days from 14 July to 12 October 2026, all of it summer time, and averaged the range of each candle, high minus low as a share of the open, for every UTC hour.

The result is mixed. Averaged over all 24 hours, a candle ranged 0.48%. The eight hours of the London, New York and London close kill zones (06:00 to 09:00, 11:00 to 14:00 and 14:00 to 16:00 UTC) averaged 0.58%, the other sixteen 0.43%. But the kill zones are not equal:

• London kill zone (06:00 to 09:00 UTC): 0.45%, about the same as the all-day average.
• New York kill zone (11:00 to 14:00 UTC): 0.58%.
• London close kill zone (14:00 to 16:00 UTC): 0.77%.

The single busiest hour was 14:00 to 15:00 UTC, at 0.82%. That is 10:00 New York time in summer, half an hour after US stocks open. The data supports "Bitcoin is busiest while New York and London overlap". It does not show the London kill zone as special for Bitcoin. Range is also not direction: a busy hour can go either way.

How it looks on a real chart

Here is one real day, Friday 9 October 2026, with the London and New York kill zones shaded.

During the London kill zone the three hourly candles ranged 0.37%, 0.21% and 0.28%, small and orderly. At 11:00 UTC, the first hour of the New York kill zone, price made a candle that ranged 1.29% of its open and printed the day's high at 83,528.98. That was the largest range of the day. The day's low, 81,603.52, came at 01:00 UTC in the early hours, inside the Asian kill zone.

One day proves nothing. It illustrates the pattern, it does not confirm it. A sweep in the New York window would still need a close back inside the range and a shift in structure before it is an entry.

How to use both together

1. Check the higher-timeframe bias first. Time is a filter, not a reason to trade.
2. Mark the levels that hold resting orders: the previous day high and low, equal highs and lows.
3. Pick the one or two kill zones that fall in your own waking hours and convert them to your local time once, then again when the clocks change.
4. Inside the window, wait for a sweep and a shift back in the direction of your bias. If nothing happens, you do not trade.
5. Keep a log. After a month you will know whether your window earns its place for your coin, instead of relying on a quoted schedule.

Kill zones also sit above a finer layer. ICT macro times are 20-minute windows inside them, and the best time to trade crypto looks at the same question from the hourly data side. More ICT concepts are in the Learn ICT hub.

Common mistakes

• Treating a kill zone as a signal. It tells you when to look, not what to do.
• Mixing clocks. London, New York, UTC and local time in one plan is how people trade at the wrong hour. Pick UTC as the reference and convert once.
• Forgetting the clock change. The week between 25 October and 1 November is the one that trips people up.
• Copying a schedule without testing it. Sources disagree on the edges. Test your version on your market.
• Applying forex timing to crypto without a check. The data above shows London is not special for Bitcoin, even if it is in currencies.
• Trading every window. Pick one or two. A filter that lets everything through filters nothing.

FAQ

What is the difference between a kill zone and a trading session?

A session is the working hours of a market such as London or New York, about 8 to 9 hours. A kill zone is a shorter ICT window, usually 2 to 4 hours, in which traders look for entries. Kill zones are defined in New York time and can sit inside a session, before it or across its edge.

What are the ICT kill zone times?

The commonly cited times, in New York time, are Asian 20:00 to 00:00, London 02:00 to 05:00, New York 07:00 to 10:00 and London close 10:00 to 12:00. Sources differ by up to an hour, for example by putting the New York window at 08:00 to 11:00. In summer, the London kill zone is 06:00 to 09:00 UTC, which is 09:00 to 12:00 Moscow time.

Do kill zones change with daylight saving?

Yes, in UTC. They are fixed in New York time, so they move when the US clocks change on 1 November 2026. The London session moves earlier, on 25 October. In the week between, the gap between the two is different from the rest of the year.

Do kill zones work for crypto?

Our check of 90 days of Bitcoin hourly candles shows more range in the New York and London close windows than the all-day average, and about average range in the London window. It is evidence of when Bitcoin is active, not of which way it moves, and it covers one coin and one period.